From Cybersecurity to Romantasy: How I Became a Self-Published Author

I’ve always been an avid reader of fantasy; I have my mother to thank for that. She was the one who nurtured my deep love for the wondrous worlds we readers get to explore, and I’ve been hooked on reading ever since my early childhood days.

I even remember the exact moment my mother gave me a hardback copy of Eragon! We had just pulled out of the driveway to drive down to Key West, and she twisted around in her seat and handed me this huge blue book with a dragon on it. I don’t remember much from that vacation, but that book left such an impression on me that I just had to read more dragon rider books. That book was what ultimately inspired The Second Bond.

During my time at college, I ended up writing my own novels and short stories, though they were never published. They weren’t that good, but they proved to me that I could actually write and finish a project. You might think I studied English, or got a creative writing degree, but no, I earned a B.S. in Geology with a focus in Environmental Geoscience and a Minor in Geography.

And just like most college graduates, I couldn't get a job in my field. Total shocker, right? I have always been good with computers and tech stuff, so I got a job with IBM and did all kinds of on-site break/fix work. While I deeply enjoyed the job, I had to drive all over the bottom half of South Carolina to reach our customers, and I was on call 24/7 for half the month, too. The job was fun for a while, but I felt as if I wasn't reaching my full potential. I studied for and earned a couple of cybersecurity certifications from CompTIA, the Security+ and the Cybersecurity Analyst+ certifications, and got my very first cybersecurity job working for a local insurance company.

To say I was overjoyed was an understatement. I loved the cybersecurity field (still do!), and even though the work was hard, it was fascinating; I couldn't get enough of it. However… I wasn't properly trained on the job and I was let go after a short three months. I had so many grand plans for the future, and for all of that to be ripped away? It really sucked.

I spent some time soul-searching. What did I want to do with my life? Who did I want to be? It took me a while to figure it out, but I knew that I wanted a career where my entire livelihood wasn't based on the whims of an employer.

I looked into what it took to be a full-time author. What I learned made it seem impossible, but surely tackling the impossible was better than letting my income and my future be controlled by someone else, right? If other people could publish books and thrive, then I knew I could as well.

So I set off on writing my first novel. It took me a full year to write it and four months to revise it. While writing it, I read a ton of romantasy books to see what other authors were doing, and a lot of those books even helped me come up with awesome ideas to put in An Ember Rekindled. But there was a catch. Even though I kept coming up with all these awesome ideas and scenes to put in my book, when I changed something in one chapter, I had to go through the rest of the book to ensure that everything lined up perfectly. I needed to include scenes earlier in the book setting up what I just added, then I had to add scenes later in the book as well.

Truly mind-boggling to keep it all sorted, but I got it done!

They say that a typical indie author sells at most 100 copies of their book in its lifetime; 250 if they're lucky. As of September 9, 2026, I have sold just over 1,000 copies of my books with 160k Kindle pages read. Only took me about a year and a half to hit 1k copies sold, and I do want to be clear that a good chunk of that was from a BookBub Featured Deal.

That BookBub Featured Deal launched my series. I only had one book out at the time, An Ember Rekindled, but it tripled my ratings on Amazon from 20 to 60, sold several hundred copies at 99 cents, and even got me a Podium Entertainment audiobook contract for my entire series. If you'd like to read my BookBub case study, you can check it out here!

By the time that I published An Ember Rekindled, I had done zero social media marketing. Zero ads. Zero visibility. I didn't even do an ARC campaign. Oh, and to top it all off, I launched the book right when I was getting on a plane to go see a friend, ended up getting sick, and had to fly home a few days later feeling super miserable. 0/10, would not recommend launching a book this way!

So after my 90 day kindle enrollment period was up, I put it up for free on BookSprout and got some really nice reviews. Then I dabbled in Amazon ads (went terribly) and then I tried Meta ads. While I did make some money, I never made more than I spent. I spent much too long waiting to see if that book would do anything, but hey, nobody really knew about it, so nobody really bought it.

It has been quite a journey getting this series going, but I have loved every moment of it. I have learned so much about this industry, and no other job has ever given me such a sense of pride. I have always loved writing stories, but never on such a large scale. The Second Bond series was originally going to have three books, but I kept coming up with so many incredible ideas and plotlines that I couldn't fit them all into a trilogy. This series will have five books… and the adventure is just getting started.